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An anonymous reader writes in with news about Russias censorship of internet sites critical of President Vladimir Putin. "Russia blocked access to the internet sites of prominent Kremlin foes Alexei Navalny and Garry Kasparov on Thursday under a new law critics say is designed to silence dissent in President Vladimir Putin's third term. The prosecutor general's office ordered Russian internet providers to block Navalny's blog, chess champion and Putin critic Kasparov's internet newspaper and two other sites, grani.ru and ej.ru, state regulator Roskomnadzor said. The move was the latest evidence of what government opponents see as a crackdown on independent media and particularly the internet, a platform for dissenting views in a nation where state channels dominate the airwaves. Ej.ru editor Alexander Ryklin called it 'monstrous' and a 'direct violation of all the principles of freedom of speech,' More at EFF, and in earlier stories at the The Huffington Post, and Deutsche Welle, which notes, 'This year's report by Reporters Without Borders on World Day against Cyber Censorship condemns Russia as one of the "Enemies of the Internet." "Russia has adopted dangerous legislation governing the flow of news and information and freedom of expression online," it concludes.'"

As one of the great monsters of history, rehabilitating Stalin is an important bit of symbolism and tone. If Austria and Germany were to one day declare that they were reuniting in an act of self-determination by the German people, and then started making public pronouncements about the many great achievements of Der Führer, wouldn't that be cause for concern? Stalin killed far more than Der Führer.

It's always struck me that being just outside the european union must kinda suck. Customers in the EU will be reluctant to buy from your buisness because they know they risk being stuck with stupid fees for collecting trivial ammount of VAT*. Travel into neighbouring countries is subject to restrictions decided by the block as a whole** rather than by your neighboughing country.

Putin aside I can see why the russians would not much like the idea of going from being the dominant force in a block to being the

Russia has always had the option of joining the EU, in fact, after the fall of the USSR there was even a lot of talk about allowing it entry into NATO.

But that aint going to work for Putin because the EU is a largely democratic organisation, and Putin wants to run a dictatorship all by himself, so he's always chosen to pursue conflict with them rather than cooperation, unlike his predecessors post-USSR who were more progressive and more willing to look to eventually becoming a more integral part of Europe a

Haven't seen the whitewashing of his crimes against the populace at large that they're pushing in the schools? Don't have friends or family that live in that part of the world who lived through it? Well that's okay. Stalin was a mass murderer, like many communist and socialist dictatorships he set the tone for all the other countries that followed that same ideology. However, what's happening these days isn't any different from fascist groups who whitewash their favorite fascist leader.

I don't know what you understand under socialist and dictatorship, but these 2 terms are mutually exclusive. USSR was fascist.

USSR was a secular theocracy. It treated Marxism - or "Dialectic Materialism" - as revealed truth, and as theocrats usually do, made more shit up as it went along. If and when reality disagreed with revelation, it got ignored or violently suppressed. And it never really changed: people got tired and disappointed with their prophet, just like they'd gotten tired and disappointed with the Czar earlier, and abandoned him. But the spirit of autocracy - the myth of divine leader - lived on, thus Putin is now enthroned as the new Czar, just like Stalin before him. Meet the new boss, the same as the old boss.

And no, USSR was not fascist. Fascism and Stalinism are both manifestations of something far older and nastier, a sickness that to some extent pervades all human societies. All who try to build a utopia reach the point where it seems the goal is just within range if they only sacrifice a few people to reach it. If they don't, the paradise remains flawed, and if they do, it turns into a nightmare - just like Soviet Union and various fascist regimes did.

Of course, the US also did exactly that to win the Cold War, and it seems the bill is now coming due. Time will tell how far the "land of the free" will fall before what it's unleashed is done with it.

>USSR was a secular theocracyinteresting points you make. but in practice, the ussr worked like a fascistic state: a small group of people controlling the whole of the state. throw in the militaristic tendencies and the nationalism... sounds a bit like the other superpower does it not (yeah, technically the US has 2 parties, but they are both controlled by the people with the money)

You could say the same thing about the United States of America, whose formation in 1776 was a treasonous act against the Kingdom of Great Britain. In both cases it makes little practical sense to consider all their respective laws and treaties void, and as a matter of law they are not (at least insofar as Russia and the USA are concerned).

And what gave the British the right to set up colonies anyway? The (Amer)Indians were here first... (well long before the British, French and Spanish anyway.The Vikings also reached North America before the other Europeans... Say who founded Russia in the first place?

But there was no revolution, and the only coup was a short-lived one which actually tried to restore the ancien regime. The Soviet Union was dismantled largely peacefully and within the existing political framework, via legislation and referenda. Furthermore there was a continuity of leadership in most republics -- those at the upper echelons of society remained very much in power, except that post-USSR they were fabulously rich as well, having dispensed with the pretense of economic equality and helped t

For a man who puts himself on his own, almost personal, state tv to the extent Putin does, we can probably safely assume that articles with the phrase "Putin reportedly claims" are full of it.

I don't understand why you keep going back to Soviet days -- your "née Soviet Union" line is almost never missing, though it doesn't make any sense (born as Soviet Union?). It is almost as if you feel you need to arouse ancient Cold War anxiety among the older readers.

Sadly, Russia is turning more and more to Soviet ways. Putin was even rehabilitating Stalin.

Well the West, thanks to the upstanding duo of Nixon & Kissinger, "rehabilitated" Mao's empire already in the mid-seventies and helped the fine western industrialists relocate their ("means of") production over to the PRC while helping their own profit margins in the process, at least for a while.

Mao Zedong, despite having achieved double the body count of Stalin, doesn't even need rehabilitation as his "Communi

Soviet Union dissolution was a lie. Ukraine is as much of inheritor of 'communism' as Russia is. Better stay as a single state to fight elements of old regime. They're present in all former soviet countries and made up this dissolution just to make some toy states to play with. I say we better undo it.

I feel for you, and I sincerely wish the best for you. I hope you wake up soon and join the rest of us in moving forward, and I hope the bodies have not been piled up so high that there will be no way back.

Moving forward is exactly what I'm trying to do. Meaning moving beyond silly superstitions like nationalism. I'm a world citizen and genuinely consider nationalists to be kinda insane. I will not harm other human being just because he happens to be of different nationality than me. But I will defend my own life and that of people I care about no matter which nationality they are. Thanks to Internet I have friends from all over the world and this is what makes me consider the notion of Nationality obsolete a

If you think I defend Putin's ideology you're insane. I don't even think there is any ideology here, only a lot of confused people. I merely profess my Humanist Cosmopolitan ideals. I don't care about Putin. Thus I see Ukraine's existence as separate state a bad thing. It only serves to break cultural ties without anything good to compensate for it. I don't believe that Ukraine's possible government has any chance to be any less authoritarian than Putin's. If it will I'll be happy if Russia joins this new s

What does Putin have to do with anything? You're so obsessed with this guy. I'm pretty sure that most Ukrainians care about him as much as I do, which is don't care at all. Fighting Putin is like fighting windmills.

We don't want to be separated with friends by national borders just because some moron wants a toy state to play with.

National borders don't need to separate people any more than, say, city limits do. In a free country, crossing the border is a formality, and many neighbour states have dispensed with even those. It's empires who make a huge deal of borders; normal nations treat them as legislation handover points.

Putin is just a figurehead. He means NOTHING. Besides, how do you know what he wants? Read his mind? It's not as simple. Life is not Star Wars. There are no villains here, just people who are delusional or mistaken. Remember you can be mistaken too. Don't take anything at face value. Large scale politics is just a show. Remember than national and state differences are forced on us by ambitious people that just want to play Civilization in RL. Putin isn't any different here than any other state leader. I wou

Humans are different yet they all are part of Humanity. Culture and language aren't a viable reason to start a war with people with different language and culture. They don't justify having national states either. They're merely accidental traits of interest to anthologists and linguists.

Yes. But it still doesn't answer my question. Many states have merged in the past with varying levels of violence and illegitimacy. Fascist Germany was merely one of them and can't be considered proof that any sort of state merger is inherently bad.

What is the upside of existence of Ukraine as separate state? And any other national state for that matter..

The larger an empire gets the less representation each citizen of that empire has and the harder it gets to topple corrupt rulers. It can also mean that entities just outside the empire come under a lot of pressure to become part of it (in turn making the empire ever larger and more powefull).

Which I get the impression is the big problem for ukraine. It's presumablly very difficult to find compromises in politics when one side wants to be part of the russian block, the other side wants to be part of the EU

The whole reason Putin has troops locking down Crimea and spreading propaganda left and right is precisely because he knows he could not win the referendum there legitimately. It's a sham, a stitch up, theft of Ukranian territory against the genuine will of the people. Even with a majority of 58% of ethnic Russian origin in Crimea most of those ethnic Russians still identify their nationality as Ukrainian, even though their ethnicity is Russian.

There is no division in the Ukraine, separatists across the whole nations are an absolute minority. It's no different to Scotland and the UK in this respect - the fact that 90% of the population there are Scottish doesn't mean 90% are in favour of independence, on the contrary, polling consistently puts only about 30% in favour of independence.

I would like to see evidence for your claim that Ukraine is not really a divided country and that's all Putin's propaganda. Everything else I've seen suggests that Ukraine really is a highly divided country with a large population of people who would prefer to be a part of Russia than the EU. I'm not convinced this is something Putin is just making up.

The problem here is that the west has already decided it doesn't matter what

"Naturally I don't ask them to give up their culture. But I don't want them to force it on unwilling people on territory of Ukraine. This is absolutely inadmissible. "

Yet you want to force it onto them and when you do it it's not inadmissible? You don't see the hypocrisy in that?

"This is the reason Crimea rebelled."

Accept it didn't. In polling in February before this all happened only 41% of Crimeans wanted to join Russia. What's going on in Crimea isn't rebellion, it's Russian occupation - it's forced annexation of Crimea against the will of the people there - you know, that thing that on one hand you're saying is inadmissible, and on the other you're arguing for?

"If Ukrainian state respected Russian people as much Russian Federation respects its own people of different nationalities"

Yeah because it's so nice being Jewish in Russia and suffering attacks from Neo Nazis? It's so nice being Chechnyan in Russia and getting bombed to fuck? Outside of nationalities it's so nice being gay in Russia and being legislated against and beaten to death with the blessing of the state? It's so nice having differing political views than Putin and being beaten, jailed, or killed?

The only thing Russians look after in Russia are straight white Russians who conform to the will of Putin. Anything else and you're fucked.

It's definitely true that Ukrainization policies are creating tensions within Ukraine. And there exists strong support for some parts of it to secede to Russia. And there were better ways of resolving them than staging a coup and shooting at law enforcement. In fact this coup only gives Russia a reason to invade and many here are happy to oblige. If state borders were made to match national distribution Ukraine would end up losing a lot of territory so only sane strategy for them was to de-emphasize nationa

There was no coup. The democratically elected Ukrainian parliament voted with a majority of 73% to oust Yanukovych. That's a democratic decision, not a coup.

There is no part of the Ukraine where a majority of people want to merge with Russia, that's why Russia is deploying troops and spreading propaganda in Crimea, because it's the only way they can rig the vote to make it look like that's the case.

Then what was the point to shoot at law enforcement? If it was in any way lawful Yanukovych wouldn't have to flee the country. And, besides, polls doesn't show national distribution. And are kinda unreliable, prone to manipulation. Why do you think that polls manipulated by Ukrainian regime are any better than polls manipulated by Russian regime? And even 33% wanting to secede is more than enough to demonstrate tension. It's really huge value that means that radical national stance is untenable for Ukraine.

The Berkut (acting as Yanukovych/Russian enforcers) were shooting at riot police AND protesters to try and provoke a bigger confrontation between the two - this is something eyewitnesses in both the police and protesters have both attested to witnessing. This did result in some police/protesters firing at each other in the confusion it caused.

"If it was in any way lawful Yanukovych wouldn't have to flee the country."

He didn't have to flee the country, no one made him flee the country. What he didn't want wa

I grew up in the shadow of fucking Soviet warheads. When the abomination that was the Soviet Union collapsed (because that is what it was, a collapse that forced a dissolution), everyone were better off. We've never had it better here in fact, than since that monstrosity of a union disappeared, and Russians could have had it just as good, were it not for Putin.

There is no interest in "eradicating the old elements", Putin is one of those old elements himself. He's building himself a buffer zone that he can steal from without repercussions, because he wants a new empire and he can't afford it on Russian GDP alone. He needs vassals he can exploit without affecting the core of his new empire. He is in essence rebuilding the Soviet Union, one invasion at a time. He couldn't have done it without you though, and I'm sure he's grateful for your support (no, not really).

The way he is doing this is actually quite smart, although the end goal doesn't serve the widest of interests. He's filling the Russian media with macho propaganda and grand standing to seed the yearning for the old days of power. Ask almost any Russian and they'll have zero clue what the fuck is going on, except what Putin has made them believe. If he says green is red, that is what the Russians will walk into the future believing. "Solving" the world's problems isn't on the agenda for you great leader, it is a talking point - and nobody outside of Russia is buying it, but that's not the point of it. All that sauce is for you, not us, so you can stop regurgitating it, Putin already knows it's a sham and you sound ridiculous when you do.

When there are no protests at home, you can pretty much act as you wish. When you act like a dick and the negative responses start flooding in, you can always point to them and go: "everyone is afraid of us, they don't understand our grand design, we must continue on with our master plan". But what your great leader has forgotten to tell you is that his grand standing is hinging on a bluff, and an assumption that nobody is going to call it out of fear of "Old Russia".

If the gas revenue stream dries up, you guys are going to be seriously fucked. For the takers of the gas, the price of heating a living room will rise, but that is not the end of the world over here - we still have the money we're not giving to Putin in our hands. But for the Russian end of the transaction is a catastrophe. There will only be more gun point diplomacy or capitulation left, again. An argument can be made that those two options really are the same, the only difference is the length of time it takes the first option to merge into the second option, or you could count the number of bodies that has to pile up before that happens - your choice really.

What all this amounts to, is a massive failure in learning from your collective mistakes. All of this will not end well for anyone but Putin himself, he's already pocketed enough money to not care what happens to the rest of Russia, the worst that can happen (bar a gunshot wound to the head, launched from a mile out) is exile with pockets full of cash, so of course he's moving forward. Just don't keep kidding yourselves and thinking he's going to take you all with him.

What's more likely to happen down this path you're following, is another era of an isolated, poverty stricken Russia, and the really, really sad part is that you're all buying into it as the only way to go. I feel for you guys, I really do. It saddens me, because I remember the 80s. Do you?

Some of us here do remember them too, and most of us just can't still get over the shock of the speed with which the high tide of nationalism and chest-pounding has risen here. We still thought that old SU was left dead and buried back in the 1991, now just a horrible husk to warn the future generations. Nope, it seems to raise its ugly head once more, and suddenly there are so little sane people left, so little ways to change things back or even to run from them... Strange times here, really.

Yeah I thought as much. You don't remember, you only know what you've been told. You've got no education worth a damn so you can't tell a propaganda move from a donkey, even if one of them kicked you in the face. It is sad, both that you don't get it, and that it will take you the better part of your life to come to the realization that you don't get it. And while you're mulling it over you're letting someone else make all the big decisions for you, having you think they're your own thoughts. These are all

What you telling me is propaganda too, don't you see it? And I rejected it just like you rejected Soviet propaganda. I don't believe in any political bullshit, either by Putin or arrogant people like you. I don't see any difference between your ramblings and Soviet state propaganda. You should practice your critical thinking skills and forget about politics, which is mostly a big show with little consequence other than senseless violence.

Rules against criticizing the government makes a political campaign all but impossible for anyone but the incumbent. In other words, they are now a dictatorship. Hopefully the Russian people won't give up their freedoms so easily, and push back.

Well, it's nice to hope, but Putin's rating is at its highest in the last 3 years, somewhat about 71% [wsj.com]. There is no realistic hope for any "push back" anytime soon. Its not like some crazy dictator and small group of his henchmen took over the country - no, its like the majority of population is winding up some sort of mass psychosis. Which is a much more terrifying thought, really.

Well, even the opposition (at least the sane ones) today admit that Putin's popularity is quite high - much higher than popularity of said opposition. Even in our social networks (including LiveJournal) there are many, many people who honestly believe that Putin is doing a great job. And the silent majority are mostly apathetic, because of "If not Putin, than who?" mentality. There is no reason not to trust these polling figures, as there is no political or social force strong enough to prove them wrong. So

Our 'opposition' was always a joke, not enough sane and skilled people in it. Zhirinovsky openly shows it on his own example. He's obviously a gifted person, but he opted for a career of a clown instead. Presumably because there's no place in political life for anyone remotely serious.

Well - try and tell them that it's bullshit propaganda. You'll be instantly branded as a "unpatriotic liberalist scum" and no further discussion would be possible. Propaganda works best when its seeds fall on the right soil. If most of the people in Russia wouldn't want it to be true, all this crude and blunt bullshit that's pouring from the official TV, radio and newspapers wouldn't work so good.

It's really painful to see young, bright and generally decent people honestly protecting this shameless invasi

Normally I like to not try and blame the people for the actions of their leadership, but frankly I've lost all faith in the ability for the majority of the Russian populace to engage in any kind of rational thinking at this point. They are part the problem.

A couple of years back they were out in protest against Putin rigging the vote to put himself back in power and I thought hey, finally, the Russian people are taking responsibility for their state, and trying to deal with their dictator.

Now two years on, an Olympic games, a bit of propaganda, creating a hate target in homosexuals to blame societies ills on (just as Hitler did with the Jews etc.), an attempted annexation of Crimea, and the resurrection of Stalin as a popular deity and suddenly Putin has 70% approval ratings again.

So whilst there are clearly a good number of Russians that still want him out, at this point they're a minority by quite a stretch. It really is the Russian people that are the problem - you might as well just alias the nation as Dumbfuckland now, because it really is a nation mostly full of dumb fucks given the approval they're now giving Putin based on his fascist, dictatorial policies. I thought it was bad enough that my nation, the UK is full of people so easily swayed by populism, bigotry, and general ignorance peddled by the media, but the idiocy of many of my countrymen appears to pale compared to those in Russia. At least whilst our population recently argued against striking Syria by a decent margin. In contrast, the Russians positively support annexing the whole of the Ukraine, not just Crimea with about 59% support on latest polls.

I wouldn't put your faith in the Russian people, they mostly seem to be an extremely fickle, easily swayed bunch and Putin controls the media, so swaying them his way appears trivial.

This is NOT intended to be a troll post.. I'm just pointing out the bias, hypocrisy and double standards.

And I'm really trying to not blame American people for what their Gov is doing. Going around conquering, stealing, raping cultures, and pillaging. What Hillary Clinton calls "bringing democracy". I'm not even gonna start on covert psy ops marketing shit cia does to manipulate people in other countries to start hating on their own leaders so that you can install puppet leader who will not do anything good

Well ignoring the fact I'm not American, something I thought would be pretty clear from my post, where I say "my nation, the UK", what you say still applies to my nation, and I agree it is hypocritical for us to lecture on some issues.

This is not one of those issues, and the argument has worn thin. This government has been actively pulling us out of wars, and our current parliament was the one that put a stop to plans to bomb Syria when we voted against that.

Sure bigotry is commonplace, but there are different levels of it in different societies and some have a clearly much higher level of social acceptability of it than others. In terms of homosexuality as an example whilst much of the West has been moving towards more equality such as legalising gay marriage some states like Uganda and Russia have been going backwards and making some things related to homosexuality illegal so there is a disparity and some cultures most definitely can be called out as more big

Except no coup has been staged. Yanukovych was kicked out by a similarly elected branch of government using the procedure of impeachment with a majority of 73% voting to oust him.

This was an entirely democratic act against a single individual who granted himself more powers than the people wanted him to have and no longer was representing the people. That's how it promotes freedom - by giving the majority what they want.

So I'll turn the question around on you, how does allowing Yanukovych to stay in power a

I wonder if blocking this kind of stuff is self defeating. It sort of signals what you should be looking at. If I saw that The Huffington Post was blocked, it would make me curious and I would find a way to read The Huffington Post.

I'm curious about this myself, obviously dedicated opposition will oppose Putin and evade blocks regardless, so I assume the target is slightly apathetic or undecided Russians. I suspect they're mostly trying to stop people from posting articles on the equivalent of the Russian Facebook.

China is probably the best example of blocking on a large scale (by a country that dominates the language), there's clearly a lot of Chinese who go to great lengths to evade the censorship, but what about the ordinary people

Commenting here is great, but Putin does not read Slashdot. Write to your country's Russian ambassador, tell him what you think. OK: what you say will be ignored, but if 10,000 of you write - then Putin may hear of it... maybe no more than 2 lines at the bottom of some report, but that is better than nothing.

Just to make it easier for you: the UK Russian embassy contact page [rusemb.org.uk] (I would suggest Russia-UK relations queries); the USA Russian embassy contact page [russianembassy.org], post & 'phone only, unless someone can dig better than I can. Also feel free to reply to this comment with contact info for the Russian embassy in your country.

If you say nothing, then you will be ignored. Saying something cannot be worse than that !

This is what I wrote. Do not copy this word for word, write it your way.

Dear sir,

I was aghast to learn that Russia has sought to stifle political dissent by
blocking news sites and closing these sites. This is very much against the
spirit of glasnost that the great Mikhail Gorbachev used some 25 years ago when
he brought the Soviet Union into the modern world.

To be healthy a society needs its citizens to be able to speak freely, otherwise
it will stagnate: innovation will suffer if new ideas are frowned upon, we live
in a changing world, if we do not change then we slowly decline.

This is as much about science & technology as it is about politics. If you
stifle political thought then you chill all thought and the country will suffer.

Mr Putin is putting his short term comfort before the long term health of Russia.
Please tell him this this is neither good for Russia nor the rest of the world.

I have been reading a lot about the turmoil going on in Ukraine, from both English and Russian language sources. I still don't get it why Putin invaded Ukraine. I get it that returning Crimea back to the mother Russia will strike the chord with the Russian nationalists. One thing is certain that his popularity is hitting another high right now, so he and the rest of his ruling elite can sail through the next round of elections. But could Putin and other politicians in Russia be so shirt sighted that they w

There a topic that isn't about America? Well can't have that! Spin it to be about America! Redirect all topics to be on America, particularly whining about America!

Seriously, this American-centric bitching is really annoying. People need to knock it off. This is about Russia. That things are happening in America doesn't mean things aren't happening elsewhere. It also doesn't mean those things aren't of interest to the wider world. What is happening in Russia right now is of quite a bit of interest not just to Russians, but to Ukrainians, and to the whole of Europe. Also some people from the US might like to know too because hey, it is nice to be informed about the wider world.

So quit. Quit trying to make every thread about the US. There are lots and lots of those on Slashdot. When something comes up on a foreign country, let it be on that topic. The topic at hand is Russian media/internet censorship not NSA spying. That one is a little further down the front page.

There a topic that isn't about America? Well can't have that! Spin it to be about America! Redirect all topics to be on America, particularly whining about America!

What's ironic is that the folks who tend to do this, are just as likely to sneer that Americans don't care about anything happening outside the US.

Well, Americans don't really care about anything happening outside the US, unless it affects them. Even the US government is that way... why are they not in Ukraine right now while this democratic country is under attack by "unspecified" militants? The US was happy to roll into Afghanistan (for revenge) and Iraq (for oil) at a moments notice. No problems helping dispose of their old enemy Gaddafi either. (Libya has oil, right?)

The Europeans can't complain much though as they are even softer on military i

There a topic that isn't about America? Well can't have that! Spin it to be about America! Redirect all topics to be on America, particularly whining about America!

Yep, welcome to Slashdot. You could have an article about the most hellish police state on earth, where visiting a site like Reddit could have your grandmother tortured to death and the second comment post (after the GNAA and frosty piss comments) will be "YEAH, but the USA is WAY WORSE."

But the level to which Russian society is controlled by the government has always been markedly higher than the level to which the US society is controlled by the goverment. What about restricted cities, internal passports, vastly greater lack of freedom of speech and expression etc.? Even though I'm always ready to call on Americans for being absurd, I'm also perfectly willing to admit that the civic situation in the US, while not perfect, is somewhere in the 90th percentile, as far as the world's nations are concerned. You simply can't say the same thing about Russia. You never could.

Until we stop living in a mass surviellence state, this all rings hollow.

The US (and the West in general) differs from Russia not in our inclination towards surveillance -- pretty much all governments do that -- but in the fact that it's controversial here.

You do know that it's possible to criticize bad things done by the US government, and criticize bad things done by other governments, right? Because your statement seems to indicate that you're unaware of this option.

Unlike Russia, we don't need to ban critics. We can just stalk and harrass them, until then ruin their lifes.

However well it may have worked out, Snowden's actions in distributing documents clearly violate some laws, and he clearly should face trial in the USA. Whether he should be convicted of anything or not is a separate matter.

Assange is accused of rape in Sweden. Nothing to do with the USA, unless you spend your life walking around with a tin foil hat.

Oh don't be so stupid. I'm no fan of the NSA's surveillance either but pretending that has any bearing this is complete nonsense.

About the only connection is that Putin's Russia is a warning about how bad it can get, so yes the NSA and CIA need to be reigned in somewhat, but the US isn't exactly as bad as Russia where the KGB, sorry, "FSB" as they prefer to be called nowadays, have their man in charge and basically run the entire show. At least there's still some semblance of separation between US intelligence agencies, the courts and the people who run the country still. In Russia it's all one big completely KGB orchestrated machine. The very fact the CIA had to try and meddle with the senate in itself shows they don't have that level of control over them yet, in Putin's Russia they'd have just had Feinstein and co. arrested on some trumped up charges and that would be the end of it.

So yes, whilst the US has lost it's right to preach on some issues (i.e. bitching at China for hacking) this is at least one area where it's hardly reached Putin-esque levels of dictatorship.

Stalking and being harassed even if that were happening on a widespread scale to all critics (it's not, people are still free to criticise - that's what you're doing for fucks sake and I doubt anyone is stalking or harassing you) is even then still a far cry from being beaten senseless and chucked in jail, or just outright assassinated with a bullet to the head by an assailant that never gets found (because they don't want to find him).

In Russia, you cannot become rich and/or powerful unless higher-ups have tons of "compromat" on you. And at the moment you step off line, you'll stop being "rich and powerful", and become prisoner.
(Look at Magnitsky's case. His bosses were even Putin's vocational supporters! They were rich and powerful. And at the moment they stepped off the line, they were robbed, and Magnitsky was murdered in the jail).
Sure, US and EU tendencies with mass surveillance, censure, attack at investigative journalists, etc a

So we get the first post and its the old "Yeah - but Teh Eval America'z worster. Ermaghered!"

Tell you what - If America is so fucking awful, why don't you renounce your citizenship, and move to Russia, because it's obviously so much better a place, and you have finally thrown off the shackles of the terrible conditions you are made to live under in the states. I'll pay for your one way ticket

Russia is still inhabited by a lot of people who still have power AND who were trained in the Soviet version of MAD (Mutual Assured Distruction, for those who didn't spot or don't grok the acronym already) . This means that, when people in the west start classifying Putin as another possible 'classic nutcase leader', along the lines of Saddam Hussein, Moammar Kadafi or the Ayatollah Khomeini , they should remember, Putin has some very different reasons why he might just want to give the appearance of being

It's nice that we've had 25 year break from facing global thermonuclear war, but Russia is an expansionist aggressive nation again. Mutually assured destruction may not work this time if Putin would rather die and take the rest of the world out with him rather then relinquish power.

I suspect you're quite wrong. Men like Putin (megalomaniac psychopaths) adore and respect military strength in others and, as with all psychopaths, they love themselves far to much to risk dying. If Obama had responded by moving intermediate range nuclear missiles into Poland and the Baltic countries thus enabling a faster first strike capability, Putin might have been angry at first, but the US would have won his respect in the long run.

If history is anything to go by Putin is going to keep doing land grab

If history is anything to go by Putin is going to keep doing land grabs until someone with a good arsenal of nukes agrees to play the brinksmanship game with him.

It's far too early to say but I'm hopeful that this isn't the only solution. The risk with brinkmanship is that it only takes a tiny mistake to turn into a global catastrophe. What we might be seeing at the moment is a credible attempt to move beyond hard power politics by the west and if it works it could set a far better precedent for diplomacy t

We can hope that Putin will be satisfied with Crimea, but it looks like Moldova is next on his list. One can hope that that will be all that he takes and that he wouldn't for example risk invading Lithuania, a NATO country. But on the other hand, what could be a greater victory for Putin and his dream of breaking the west's dominance than invading a NATO country Crimea-style, without a shot fired? It would shatter the idea that NATO is a strong and relevant player in one fell swoop.

Snowden might be a Sealand double agent for all I know, the point is: were his revelations made up or he spit the truth? The truth is way more damaging of course. Well, a strange kind of damage. Knowing about the excesses of surveillance state is a benefit to the people and does not hinder in any way the agencies to keep doing what they do, because they always de facto operate above the law in every place. So you have a double agent aiding the enemy. Hmmm?

You could have saved a lot of space by leaving out the puerile insults. Slashdot's moderation system is a long way from perfect but what exactly do you think they should do to 'fix' it. Stop users moderating and have all comments equal, allowing the spamming of views? Have one person or a small group decide which posts are good or bad?

Based on this post it seems likely to me that you can't express a point effectively and rather than resolve that you've decided it must be the fault of other people that yo

>> My university degree and the 22 books I've written are conclusive proof that I can express myself just fine
Well they didn't teach you that starting off by insulting a group is NOT the best way to get them onside?
I think you are incapable of expressing yourself in a non-arrogant manner.